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Toro Rosso: McLaren criticized Honda publicly

Toro Rosso: McLaren criticized Honda publicly

22-11-2018 10:38
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Nicolás Quarles van Ufford

Toro Rosso's chief engineer Jonathan Eddolls has insisted that McLaren spoke badly about Honda too often in public during their three-year partnership, as Honda swapped McLaren for Toro Rosso this season.

Even though Toro Rosso are only in ninth place in the constructors' championship, their relationship with Honda has proved to be a good one. The pace might not have been there at the start of the season, but the Japanese power-unit has taken massive steps as the season progressed, with the third spec of their engine even being more powerful than the Renault engine, according to reports.

Eddolls reveals that Toro Rosso's expectations weren't high when Honda first came in because of McLaren's public criticism. 

"That was measured by what we had read in the press," he told Motorsport-total.

He did walk that back a little bit.

"They did not paint a bad picture of them, but their expectations were lower than they could be, and they were at a reasonable level."

Speaking on their own relationship with Honda, Eddolls was particularly happy with the way Honda developed the engine's pace in the later stages of the season.

"The third version was a clear improvement in terms of power, especially in qualifying.

"Reliability has been relatively good, too, considering the grid penalties we've traded in, the figure is very high, but we put up with a lot of them to activate powertrain components - for example, when we had a bad qualifying session."